Jewish and Pro-Palestinian Students Clash in London

By JTA February 21, 2012

Jewish students at the London School of Economics and members of the university’s Palestinian Society clashed during an Israel Apartheid Week protest.

The Palestinian Society protesters created a mock checkpoint Monday outside a campus building, stopping students by asking for identification and reportedly harassing Jewish students.

Counter-protesters, said to be members of the Students’ Union Jewish Society, threw water balloons at the Palestinian Society protesters, spurring a fight that injured at least one student, the Jewish Chronicle reported. University security had to separate the protesters.

“The Union of Jewish Students has consistently opposed these fake security checkpoints as being intimidating against Jewish students,” a union spokesman told the Jewish Chronicle. “These stunts reduce what is a serious and complex situation between Israelis and Palestinians into theatrical provocations that can only ever prove divisive here on British campuses.”

The school’s Students’ Union said in a statement that it supports the right to peaceful protest but condemned the violence. The union said it would undertake an investigation of the incident in conjunction with the school.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO